Piano four hands

By far the greater proportion of music "à quatre mains" consists of arrangements of orchestral and vocal compositions and of quartets and other groups for stringed instruments.

Such arrangements were especially popular before the development of recording technology, as the vast majority of the time there would be no other way to hear many of the best-known works of music.

However, the increase of power and variety obtainable by two performers instead of one offers a legitimate inducement to composers to write original music in this form, and the opportunity has been by no means neglected, although cultivated to a less extent than might have been expected.

[3] Another early exemplar followed in Dessau about 1782, under the title Drey Sonaten füre Clavier als Doppelstücke fur zwey Personen mit vier Handen von C. H. Müller.

But the short compass of the keyboard, which in Bach's time and indeed until about 1770 never exceeded five octaves, was ill-adapted to the association of two performers on the same instrument, and it is doubtless on this account that the earlier composers have left so little music of the kind.

Besides writing a number of small pieces for two performers, Schumann made a very novel and successful experiment in his Spanische Liebeslieder (op.

An analogous idea was later carried out by Brahms, who wrote two sets of waltzes for four hands and four voices (Liebeslieder Walzer, Op.